The Last Days of School

This was a crazy fun week for Ella! After the weekend fun of visiting with Bubba and Grand Pat, she had a school field trip on Tuesday afternoon. I volunteered to chaperone this one because Lily could come too. We visited Staring Lake Park. The kids had fun with bubbles, sidewalk chalk, played with a parachute and chased Rocket Balloons. We had a snack and then enjoyed the rest of the time playing in the park. Even though this park is only about 10 minutes from our house, we had never been there making it that much more fun for Ella and Lily. I think Ella's favorite part was riding the school bus though! She always gets so excited when she gets to do that! (Lily and I had to follow in the car because of liability reasons or something, Lily couldn't ride the bus because she wasn't a student at Partners Preschool.)


Top: The parachute game and Ella chasing Rocket Balloons.
Middle: Lily enjoying her spot in the grass and Ella, Rachel and Ellie riding the crank toy at the park (you can sit on this platform and someone else turns a crank to move you back and forth). Bottom: Can you spot Ella on the school bus? :-)

Wednesday we had our sitter, Olga back after a month long hiatus. She visited her family and friends in the Ukraine for a few weeks. And she brought back some Ukrainian chocolate for all of us! I thought that was so sweet of her to think of us on her trip! The kids were so excited to see her and play with her again. Next week is her last week with us unfortunately, at least on a regular basis. Our schedule is changing for the summer so we don't really need her. I hate to lose her though, she's so great with the kids!

Then today! Ella had her first little concert at school and a little graduation ceremony in her classroom. Andrew was so bummed to miss it because he was in New York for work! I videoed the whole thing though and my dad took pictures for me. So of course, we have the whole thing captured (You'd expect nothing less from me, right?). I do think the graduation is a little over the top, especially because she will be attending the same preschool again next year. And it tends to lend to the idea of overachieving that seems such a huge focus in our society. (Sidenote: I actually read a post today on one of the book blogs I read that sort of touched on this same idea. You can check it out here.) While it was really cute and I think its nice to make every kid feel like they have accomplished something, I just worry about putting too much pressure on our kids to achieve so early on. Just let them be kids, you know. It seems they graduate from everything these days (preschool, kindergarten, each school they attend). I don't remember receiving accolades for anything until at least the end of middle school when I was growing up. (Sorry just another one my rants). ;-)



Ella was so excited about singing for us last week. She told us about it a couple different times and sang a few of the songs while she was playing around the house. But today, once all the parents and family members were seated in front of the kids, I think she was a little nervous. She didn't really smile much, and stared mostly at the teacher. I think she was really overwhelmed the whole afternoon. I asked her if she had fun and she smiled and said that she did. At least next year, she'll know what to expect.




Top: That's Ella with her friend, Emma. Emma actually lives a block
away from us and we carpool with her, which worked out great for
me and Julie, Emma's mom. :-)

I'll post pictures from the field trip tomorrow and hopefully get a little of the video up soon. :-)
We have another fun-filled weekend planned so look for more updates early next week!

Memorial Day Weekend

It seems like every summer we are scheduled to the hilt and just running around like crazy. Well, we're not even to summer yet, and things seem to be picking up. Andrew has been traveling a bit for work, first to Houston and now he's in New York for a couple days. It seems like he's home for a few days and then off again. Packing and repacking. And part of that is because he and I also got away for Memorial Weekend! Yay! We went up to the Gull Lake area again. The same place we visited last year at this time.

Tom and Pat arrived Thursday evening to get settled in with the girls. Ella and Lily were sooo excited to get to spend the whole weekend with Bubba and Grand Pat. We said bye to the girls Friday morning and quickly packed and got in the car while they were at Ella's gym class. We got out of the driveway about 5 minutes before they returned home!

Here's some pictures I took of the resort as I was wandering around:




Although we loved staying at Grand View Lodge last year, we thought we would try a different place this time. So we booked a golf mini-suite at Madden's Inn. Whereas Grandview was on the north end of the lake, Madden's is on the south end on a peninsula between Wilson Bay and East Gull Lake. Our package included all meals and unlimited golf. Heaven for Andrew!! Friday afternoon he played on the Pine Beach East course. He was able to play by himself so he played two balls and replayed several holes. He ended up playing about 48 holes instead of just 18! Again, Heaven for Andrew! Saturday morning we had breakfast together and then he headed out to the Classic course while I headed over to the Spa for a facial and pedicure. I had a really relaxing time and he enjoyed more than 18 holes of golf again.

Saturday afternoon we headed over to play a little mini-golf at Pirate's Cove. We decided to play the more challenging Blackbeard course and had a good time. There was a group of 7 unchaperoned pre-teen boys in front of us. Rather than get annoyed by them, we were making bets on which one of them would fall in the water first or get hurt first. After about 11 holes they decided to throw in the towel on the golf and headed on over to the go-carts. Andrew tends to like to make things even when we play, so he usually gives me a one-stroke handicap per hole. Well, I was kicking some butt with my mini-golf putting because we ended up tying WITHOUT the handicap! :-) I almost beat him too!

After the rousing round of mini-golf we headed into Baxter to see the new Indiana Jones movie and have dinner at Poncho and Lefty's Mexican Restaurant. We really enjoyed our movie going experience. It's funny, the last Indy film came out in 1989 and I think much of the audience was probably preteen to middle-age. Well now almost (ugh!) 20 years later the audience was about 20 years older on average too. HA! That really made us feel old! And the theater in Baxter was pretty old-school, just like we were watching the movie back in 1989, no stadium seats, small theater, limited concession stand. It was a lot of fun! The movie itself was mediocre. I actually enjoyed the first half quite a bit. It was pretty much classic Indy but the last half, was a little out there. Sort of Indiana Jones meets Close Encounters. However, it is classic Spielberg/Lucas through and through. It sort of combined their fascination with adventure and the otherworldly. :-) At any rate, if you're at all a fan of Indy, you should at least see it! There was a small hint at the end that the classic fedora and whip might be passed on to Shia LaBeouf. Hmmm.....that might be interesting. But, I think the franchise is best left alone as it is. :-)

Here are some shots of the golf course from our room. That's Andrew on the green.:




Andrew spent Sunday morning playing golf at a different resort right down the road, the Bobby course at the Legacy Courses at Cragun's. He really enjoyed his outing and playing the very scenic course. While he did that, I just relaxed reading and hanging out around our resort. I even spent part of the time sitting on the beach reading by the lake, which was great! That afternoon we headed to Nisswa to go to a couple of the cute shops and pick up some gifts for the girls. We enjoyed a quick bite to eat at Rafferty's Pizza. They have one of the top 100 best pizzas in the country!! And it WAS good! After our speedy visit to Nisswa, we headed up north to Bemidji to visit with Jon and Jessica Slusser and their adorable little guy, Hayden. He was so cute and happy! It was fun to see all of them again.

Monday morning we got up early and both played the Social 9 course. We had the course to ourselves for the most part and had a lot of fun. I had some decent shots and some really awful ones. But we both had fun! After that, we packed up and headed back to Eden Prairie. We really had a fun weekend and enjoyed our time away from everyday life. And the girls had the time of their lives with Bubba and Grand Pat! Ella got to go to a birthday party for one of her classmates on Saturday. She was sooo excited about going that she woke up at 5:30AM on Saturday! She had so much fun. And it was a drop off party so I think that made her feel like a "big kid". They also enjoyed visiting the mall, Target, Original Pancake House and Applebee's with the grandparents.

Thanks so much to Tom and Pat for watching the kids for us. I think they survived all right! And had a lot of fun themselves! I don't think the kids ran them too ragged. :-)

(I'll add pictures tomorrow after I get them uploaded to Shutterfly!)

Grandma Mazie's Birthday!

Two weekends ago, we visited Grandma Mazie's for her birthday celebration. She turned 81 and doesn't seem a day over 70! We helped out my cousins planting Grandma's flowers around her house and doing general yard clean-up (an annual Engelhart tradition). This was our first year for getting in on the action. And believe it or not, this was the first time Andrew had been to Grandma house when it wasn't winter! As is another Engelhart family tradition, there was quite the spread of food (always tons of food!!) and then birthday cake for dessert. Grandma opened a few gifts and we all just relaxed and hung out. The kids enjoyed running around playing with bubbles and coloring. I also took a few pictures of my cousin Cindy's family as a practice session. We are getting together sometime next month for me to take family pictures of them at the Arboretum (my first professional gig--albeit unpaid). :-) All in all, we all enjoyed our time over at Grandma's.

Enjoy some pictures from the day!

Technical Difficulties!

Sorry for the terrible pixelated images on the blog. I am trying out a new site on Shutterfly that I may use and for some reason, all of sudden the pictures on the current blog posts are all messed up. I'm hoping this situation corrects itself in a day otherwise, I may have to reattach them. Older posts do not seem to have this problem so I'm thoroughly confused at the moment. But stay tuned for future posts on Grandma Mazie's birthday, Memorial Weekend, Ella's School Field Trip and Graduation! Whoo hoo! I can just feel your excitement radiating through the wireless connection! And possibly if it doesn't mess anything else up, a new photo site!

Edited to add: Still VERY annoyed about the pixelated images. I'm probably going to have to go in and delete and reload them to get them to look right again. And I sure hope that works, otherwise, I'm at a total loss. Also, we are going to try out a new photo site from Shutterfly. Here's the link: http://isaacsonfamilyphotos.site.shutterfly.com/

I'll eventually get all of 2008's pictures up on the new site and the old site will continue to be available for those new to the site or those who might want to reminisce. :-) The new site has some pretty cool features like a feed to our blog so you can see if there are new posts directly from this page. You can leave us comments if you like. There is a movie strip slideshow function on the "Albums" page. I might even organize things out by category and add separate pages for vacations and family visits, links we like, maybe our wishlist. Who knows! I'm still playing around with it.

So enjoy checking it out and see what you think. I'd love to hear anyone's comments about it; good or bad. And in the meantime, I'll try to get some real posts up in the next couple days!

Just thought I'd share a couple of Ella's latest masterpieces. She's in her Collage Phase. I think she's been inspired by her current unit at school. They are learning about art this month including Picasso, Jackson Pollack, and different art techniques. I think she's been influenced, what do you think, maybe a little Picasso-like (at least the one on the right)? :-)

Let's Go Fly a Kite...

I picked up a couple little kites for the girls on one of my trips to Target. They don't have a frame or anything and they just fold up into these little pouches. Ella got a Cinderella one and Lily got a Nemo one. It was a perfect morning yesterday to try them out, warm and a bit windy. First they tried them out with Daddy and then again with B-pa when he stopped over for coffee. Ella was REALLY into it and has since asked to fly them again several times. We went out again this morning but the wind wasn't quite as good. And Lily, well, she's just not quite into it yet. But the rest of us sure had fun with them!

Happy Mother's Day

Happy belated Mother's Day to all the awesome moms we know out there! We had a really nice weekend. My mom and Dave came up for a visit. On Saturday we ventured to the Mall of America and went on some of the new Nickelodeon rides there. The merchandising and branding really bothered me though. You actually have to buy your ride tickets in a Nick store now so your kids have to walk past all these t-shirts and stuffed animals with Dora or Backyardigans on them. The park looks like Spongebob and Diego threw up. You can't turn around without being bombarded with some character or television show title. I actually liked it a lot better before when it was just the Park at Mall of America. (Sorry I'm just grumbling...as if our kids are bombarded by enough branding on television and everywhere else!) There are some really fun rides though. And some really incredible ones that I don't think any of us would ever go on in a million years. There's a Spongebob roller coaster ride where the cars go exactly perpendicular to the ground when its going up and its sooo slow and then the drop is practically the same thing. Makes me sick to just think about it. :-) But looked like a lot of fun if you're into that sort of thing. There is also this gigantic skateboard thing that goes back and forth and while you're on it you're spinning around besides. Craziness!




Ella LOVES the Rugrats bumper cars ride. It's her "favorite". The funny thing is that she doesn't try and bump into people, she actually tries to avoid them and she's an excellent driver. I was really amazed by her abilities. I guess all that jeep driving at Bubba's house has paid off! She also went on the Swiper ride and jumped in Spongebob's Pineapple house. Lily liked the more laid back Diego train ride and the Balloon ride. After all that, we had a nice lunch at Tony Roma's and then made our way home after stopping at Build-a-Bear to pick up some pajamas for Ella Bear and Lily Cat.



Ella woke up at 5:50AM on Sunday because she was so excited for "Mommy Day". She even brought me flowers that were hidden in her closet before Andrew was even awake! Purple flowers from Lily and pink ones from Ella. :-) I also received a couple travel mugs to use for my Starbuck's coffee, a Starbuck's gift card, and I get to go to the spa for a little relaxation in a couple weeks when Andrew and I go up to Brainerd for Memorial Day Weekend. My mom also gave me a really cute cookbook called "Kitchen Playdates" with a lot of suggestions for things to do with kids in the kitchen.

Later in the day we had a yummy lunch over at my grandma's house compliments of my Aunt Carol and visited there for awhile before making our way home again. Andrew took my out to dinner at Biaggi's while my mom and Dave entertained the kids for a bit. All in all, a very nice Mother's Day!

Outdoor fun

In between rain storms and cold snaps we have been trying to get outside as much as possible. A couple weeks ago we visited the Arboretum. It was a beautiful day, but unfortunately nothing was really green at all yet. We had fun walking around anyway.



We've had a lot of fun blowing bubbles in front of the house. Lily LOVES to run and catch them. I bought a little bubble blower with a fan so I don't have to huff and puff bubbles forever. :-) And the sand table has gotten quite a bit of use lately as well. They like to get a little water in the watering can and pour it in to make the sand good and wet. Great for building castles. Then they find stuff in the yard to add as decoration.




The little house on our deck has been getting some use as well. We watched my friend Kelly's daughter, Claire a couple nights this week to help her out while her husband is in Germany for work. Little Claire is so sweet and perfect. She didn't cry, whine, whimper or anything the entire time she was with us. And she gobbled down her food which was fun to see. I haven't had much experience with kids who are really good eaters. She loved the house on our deck and both nights asked to go out there and play. She loved the Dora and police cars we have out there too. Ella and Lily really liked having her around and enjoyed showing her "how" to play with their toys. :-)

Congratulations Mr. & Mrs. Schroeder

My cousin Beth married her long-time boyfriend Jamie this past Saturday. Lily and I attended the wedding along with my dad and Clare. Ella was feeling a little under the weather so Andrew stayed home with her. Beth looked beautiful in her dress and Ann and Stephen (Beth's sister and brother) looked very sharp in their matron of honor/groomsman attire. Unfortunately, my camera battery died just before Ann walked down the aisle (darn it! I knew I should have charged it! I was just hoping it had enough juice left to get me through the wedding) so I didn't get a picture of her or Beth during the ceremony. I did try and use my dad's camera to take a few pics at the reception but they all turned out pretty bad. Apparently, I can no longer take decent pics with a point and shoot camera. There was too much of a delay that I wasn't used to, so they all turned out a bit blurry.




Top: (left) The Engelharts, Scheuring/Roselands; (right) the Bares at the church.
Middle: Beth in her dress and cutting the cake with Jamie
Bottom: (left) Grandma Mazie with my dad and his siblings;
(right) me with my cousins Amanda and Cindy and Emilee

It was a very nice wedding and Lily and I had a good time visiting with all my aunts, uncles, cousins and Grandma Mazie.

Also, it was fun to meet little Daniel Anthony Kusie, my cousin Ann's new little one. What a cutie pie! Congrats to Ann & Luke on their new arrival!

(More pictures will be in the May 2008 photo album on Shutterfly.)